


I Don't Need Protecting - Clintasha

by doctorsdaughter



Series: You Should Try It In Heels [1]
Category: Captain America - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types
Genre: F/M, Mentions of Steve Rogers - Freeform, Natasha Feels, Natasha Needs a Hug, Natasha needs protecting, Natasha's in europe, Natasha-centric, Post-Avengers (2012), Post-Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Triggers, mcu - Freeform, mentions of winter soldier - Freeform, trigger warning: anxiety, trigger warning: guns, trigger warning: language, trigger warning: medication, vulnerable!nat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-04
Updated: 2014-09-04
Packaged: 2018-02-16 02:53:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,569
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2253213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/doctorsdaughter/pseuds/doctorsdaughter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the mess of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and with SHIELD in ruins, Natasha emigrates to Europe where she creates new aliases. But not everything is what it appears to be.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Don't Need Protecting - Clintasha

**Author's Note:**

  * For [rmnff](https://archiveofourown.org/users/rmnff/gifts).



> So this is me, writing my first MCU fic as a present for rosetylers. I did my best with making Natasha as vulnerable as possible without losing character. Sorry if there are some mistakes, this wasn't beta-ed. Also, this is the movie universe, not the comic universe, so I'm going with what we know from Natasha's appearances in aven

Natasha walked up to her lavish apartment, unlocking the door using the many security measures which included – but was not limited to – a password, a finger print scan, an eye scan, and a voice reader. She, of course, also had the normal lock and keys, and dead bolts that people only found in high security banks on the other side of the door. She’d paid the landlord extra money to make sure her room as impenetrable as possible.

Living without aliases was not fun. She couldn’t remember a time when she didn’t have an alias. It got to the point where she’d forgotten her real name, as she’d been given so many fake ones. She continued to use Natasha, because it just felt right, and it was the one she’d kept the longest. She had started to make new aliases, and was currently Anastasyia when she worked at the MI5, or Viktoriya when her neighbors asked her name, or any documents needed a name, an unemployed writer.

She looked around, some would say timidly, before quickly going through the security measures as prompted. She sighed as she walked around her apartment, the gun she kept by the door held tightly in her hand, ready to pull out if someone had gotten in.

Again, living without aliases wasn’t fun. Living without aliases with HYDRA following you was less fun. It had become a ritual, check the bedroom, check the bathroom, check the closet, check the kitchen, check the living room. All the while, she turned on the lights. She often kept the lights on as much as possible. So much so she was sure her rent was mostly lighting.

Once she was as sure as she could be that her London apartment, or flat, or whatever the hell they were called, was clear, she set the gun down on the table. She wished she could go back to New York or DC, and not have to have the security systems that should only be reserved for Fury or Hill on her door. If she could have one thing back, it would be not to take fifteen minutes and a near-panic attack to make sure she was safe in her own home. By the time she was finished, she went into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. 

She wore civilian clothes today, a t-shirt and a skinny jeans, with sneakers that were good for running and training. She’d dropped a few dress sizes from anxiety and worry after the HYDRA leak. Her face was a bit sunken in. She was still stunningly gorgeous, her hair dyed a darker red, with curls cascading down her back. She’d spent the day at the indoor shooting range, which had made her feel more relaxed than she had in awhile, but now she was home. Natasha closed her eyes, doing some deep breathing. She had to take up yoga. Or maybe Stark could send her some weed. 

She grabbed a glass, filling it with water, before splashing some on her own face, repeating to herself: _you’re fine, you’re fine, you’re fine_. There was a bottle of anti-anxiety pills next to the sink that had been prescribed to her after Steve had forced her to go to a doctor after the events at SHIELD. She hadn’t touched one yet. She didn’t want to be under the influence of medication, she didn’t want to be slave to a pill.

She could protect herself without medication. Even though she could almost see Steve crossing his arms at the site of what it took her to feel safe. He would look his age for about a second, all in his eyes, and then shake his head and walk off, making her feel like she was a kid again, and she had disappointed her _dedushka_ again.

She walked back into the kitchen, going through takeout menus, deciding on Thai food. She’d eat it out on the balcony before it got too dark, or before someone would call with a mission.

She was so surrounded by her thoughts that she didn’t hear her cell phone ringing on the kitchen counter, racing to it as she picked it up by the final ring. It was a distorted voice, giving her location coordinates and telling her to wait there. She groaned. All she wanted to do was sit on the balcony and eat take out, feeding the cat that never seemed to leave her.

She looked the coordinates up in her phone, and was at least a bit thankful that she wouldn’t have to go far, only a few minutes from her apartment, flat, whatever. She went into her bedroom, quickly changing from civilian clothes into a black leather outfit, not unlike one she would wear for a SHIELD operation. She grabbed her .45 and shoved it in her pocket, as well as her cell phone, which could do about a hundred other things than text and call people, most of which were protective (thank you, Tony Stark). She grabbed a black hoodie, stuffing her hands in the front pockets, keeping her head down as she walked out of the building, going to the coordinates that happened to be a park.

She didn’t get too many phone calls like that anymore. When she was with SHIELD, it was almost a regular occurrence. Now she worked for the MI5, the safest place she could think of while still doing what she knew worked, and they preferred texting.

So to say that she was worried was a bit of an understatement. Natasha didn’t get worried easily, but she was smart enough to know that she was in constant danger now. At any point a sniper could fire and she could be dead on the streets, or a man could come up and stab her, and never be noticed on the busy streets of London.

And right now, in the middle of a park with no coverage and one, two, _three_ exits that were all too far to run from anyone without noticing, she felt like a sitting duck. There was no place to protect her, which put her senses on high alert. She looked around every time she heard a scurry or sound, all animals. Not that it made her feel much better.

She waited fifteen minutes before she started thinking about leaving. Either they were trying to make her scared before they killed her (not going to lie, it was working), or waiting for her to move before they killed her. Either way, it was getting cold and she wanted this to be over. Finally, she saw another person, all in black as well, starting to walk up to her. They held a large bag in their hands, and wore a hoodie almost identical to Natasha. The only difference was that she had ripped off the SHIELD logo, while they kept theirs on. She straightened up, reaching for her gun as the moved closer.

“I’m armed and I can hit targets a lot farther away than you, pal,” Natasha said, trying to stop her voice from quivering.

“Don’t you think I know that?” came a voice she knew all too well. She closed her eyes, sitting back, letting out a breath that she didn’t know she’d been holding. “God damn it, Clint.” She ran her hands through her hair, leaning forward, resting her elbows on her knees and her head in her hands. “I thought—”

Clint walked over, setting his bag down, sitting next to her on the bench. “I thought you would have known, what with the creepy voice scrambler we always used,” he said. There was a joking tone to his voice, and at one point she may have laughed at the memories of them stealing a voice scrambler from SHIELD, and using it to meet up after dark.

“You didn’t give me coordinates like some kind of ransom pickup either,” Natasha said sharply, staring at her hands, which were still shaking a bit. She closed her eyes, balling them into a fist.

“We both know that we don’t know what’s going on – who could be watching,” Clint sighed, saying what she knew all too well. Natasha closed her eyes, shaking her head, letting out a small, empty laugh.

 “So this is how you send for me?” Natasha asked, feeling anger bubble up inside of her; anger that she had been pushing down for months. “You make me think I’m about to get killed just so – what, we can say hi after you disappear again? Do you even know what’s happened?”

 Clint looked up at her, confused. “Since when does the prospect of being killed upset you?” He sighed again, looking down at the worn hoodie sleeves, threadbare from long-term use. “I’m sorry I couldn’t have been there, Nat, I was on assignment and Fury wanted me to stay out of site.”

Natasha stood up, laughing that empty, almost dangerous, laugh, and moved to stand in front of him. “Of course Fury fucking knew where you were.”

Clint looked up at her in shock. Never, since he’d saved her, had she said anything negative about Fury. If there was one thing Natasha was, it was loyal to the people she needed to be loyal to. “Natasha, what _happened_?”

Natasha felt her hands shake, gripping them into fists as she shook her head, mumbling something. Her eyes darted away from Clint, taking all of her might not to walk away. When Clint made a comment about her speaking up, her eyes bore into his, and Natasha knew that the anger she had held in was going to bubble over.

“You left me,” she said, though her voice sounded empty, not at all like the huge screaming scenario she had imagined. Immediately, Clint went through the logistics of his undercover operation. Of course she understood undercover operations. Of course she understood he couldn’t leave. But she wasn’t the machine that every expected her to be. Just because she let so few people past the labyrinth she’d built to protect her heart didn’t mean she was heartless. Clint above all, should know.

 “ _You left me_ ,” she repeated, her eyes darting from Clint’s, blinking rapidly as she felt herself start to shake. This time there was a bit of venom to her voice, and she closed her eyes. “ _You left me, twice.”_

She ignored Clint’s objections. “Don’t you _get it?_ We’re _partners._ It’s both of us, or none of us. That’s what you told me when I joined SHIELD. You promised you would protect me, and you promised that you would _never leave_ . And then you go and get your head fucked up by a fucking Asgardian and leave me to watch the only thing I thought I did right in my life go up in flames,” she said, scarily enough, her voice was still level. “I trusted you. The entire time it’s been us. The two of us, against everyone else, and when you left, both times, I didn’t know how I was going to handle it being just me. I _needed you_ , Clint. Fuck, I still need you. I need you all the time, because just me _doesn’t work_.”

Tears were flowing down her cheeks by this point. “Clint, I need – God, what do you want me to say? I’m not the girl to say that I need you and I love you and you should choose me. But God, _stop making me live this life on my own_ . I had finally gotten used to– ” _Don’t._ “I didn’t know where you were – I kept waiting for you to come out of the shadows and help us. Undercover is fucking great, but what’s the point if there’s no one to report back to? Did anyone _ever_ think of that, or were too busy trying to stay the hell out of dodge?”

Clint sat there, looking up at Natasha, her eyes red, her hair disheveled, her makeup smeared. This was a Natasha that he’d never known. He stood up. “I watched you,” he said. “I always watched you. I see better from a distance, and had I joined in that massive clusterfuck that was the end of all I ever knew, I couldn’t have protected you.”

Natasha shook her head. “Don’t, Clint. Don’t give me the bullshit about how you’ve _always been there_. With Loki you were brainwashed. With the Winter Soldier you were on duty. Don’t act like some fucking prince who’s there to protect me. I don’t need protecting.” She closed her eyes. She was no where near okay, but she did her best to go back to acting like it. “I get it, okay? You’re off the hook.”

Clint grabbed her hand before the walls around her heart, the walls that had momentarily been let down, go back up. “Stop acting like an agent for once, Tasha. Stop saying you understand. As scary as it is to be on the opposite end of a yelling Natasha Romanov, I just saw _you,_ so don’t go back. Don’t retreat on what you just said. Stand your ground. Hold your position.”

Natasha closed her eyes, finally feeling everything she’d kept hidden rush to her head, so quickly that she felt faint. Clint must have been able to feel what was happening, because she was in his arms the moment her brain went on overload, causing her to go limp, the only thing she could focus on was her breathing and smelling his scent. She wasn’t sure how long they stayed there. It could have been minutes, but it felt like hours. For the first time since SHIELD dispatched, she didn’t think about being a target, she didn’t think about being a sitting duck. She and Clint would have been so easy to hit, in the middle of the park, just standing there. But those thoughts never crossed her mind.

When she finally stood on her own, feeling Clint’s concerned eyes on her, she moved only enough to look at his face, but not enough to leave the embrace. “Do you have a place to stay?”

Clint flushed and shook his head. “I – uh, just got in,” he said. “Like you said, I went back to D.C, and there was no one to report to. I checked all your usual places and then finally someone said Europe. I always knew you couldn’t resist London.”

Natasha had to laugh at the mental image of Clint flying around the Eastern seaboard of the United States trying to find her, but her initial response was, “I don’t need you to protect me,” the walls around her heart definitely up and locked again.

Clint sighed. “Like I said, no one to report to,” he said. “And a change of scenery would be nice.”

Natasha smiled a little as she watched him pick up his bag. She stuck her hands back into the front pockets of her hoodie. There were so many places that would take Clint in a heartbeat, but he chose London. She knew better than to believe in coincidences. “Come on,” she said, finally. “Let’s go back to my place and I’ll get you into the MI5 before lunch tomorrow.” 

She couldn’t help but laugh, really laugh, when she listened to his bad James Bond impressions as they walked back to her flat, while she already thought about which security measures to get rid of.


End file.
